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picld - PICL daemon
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Brief description of PICLD
The Platform Information and Control Library (PICL) provides a mechanism to
publish platform-specific information for clients to access in a
platform-indpendent way. PICLD maintains and controls the PICL information
from clients and plug-in modules. The daemon is started in both single-user and
multi-user bootmode.
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The first version picld is included in: Solaris[TM] 8
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Platforms supported on are:
Sun Fire[TM] 280R

 Sun Fire[TM] 480R

 Sun Fire[TM] 490

 Sun Fire[TM] 880

 Sun Fire[TM] 890

 Sun Blade[TM] 1000

 Netra[TM] T4 aka Netra[TM] 20

 Netra[TM] T12 aka Netra[TM] 1280

 Sun Fire[TM] V1280

 Sun Fire[TM] E2900

 Sun Fire[TM] 4800

 Sun Fire[TM] 4900

 Sun Fire[TM] 6800

 Sun Fire[TM] 6900

 Sun Fire[TM] 12K/15K

 Sun Fire[TM] 20K/25K
 
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Files:

 PICL daemon door:       /var/run/picld_door

 PICL daemon:        /usr/lib/picl/picld
 
 Start/stop script:      /etc/init.d/picld
 
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Is the PICL daemon necessary for system use or can it be shutdown without 
impacting functionality 

        Although the system would not have the ability to monitor system events
the system would continue to run. Monitoring of all removal and insertion 
activities, temperature ranges exceeding thresholds, fan failures, and power 
failures would not be reported at Solaris level.

        If the picld daemon fails to start, then environment daemon (piclenvd) 
won't be running and CPU temperatures won't be monitored. This can result
in CPU overheating. In addition to this, there are a number of other subsystems 
that may depend on this daemon. /usr/sbin/prtdiag is just one example of this.
        
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Does 'picld 'daemon send messages to system console and
/var/adm/messages file 

        Yes, the 'picld' deamon provides output to the system console and the 
/var/adm/messages file when certain events are detected. These events
include 
removal and insertion, temperature & fault conditions.
        
Note - When replacing a fan tray or power supply, insert the new device after 
    a console message displays indicating the old device has been removed.
Caution - The software polling process takes up to 30 seconds to recognize 
    device insertion or removal, so allow sufficient time before inserting 
    a device into a recently cleared slot.
Note - Replace the primary fan trays before the secondary, especially in 
     the case of the CPU fan trays. The primary CPU fan tray operates at a 
     variable speed and is used to control the temperature of the CPUs.
===============================================================================

Here are some of the known bugs commonly encountered:


Following errors are reported in /var/adm/messages after
OS installation is complete on SUNW,Sun-Fire-280R, Bug-ID# 4458436

May 17 09:05:30 d34c picld[69]: [ID 299567 daemon.error] No FRU Information
for 
CPU0_DIE_TEMPERATURE_SENSOR using default temperatures May 17
09:05:30 d34c 
picld[69]: [ID 478985 daemon.error] ERROR running
psvc_update_thresholds_0 on 
CPU1_DIE_TEMPERATURE_SENSOR (1604840) May 17 09:05:30 d34c
picld[69]: [ID 875627 
daemon.error] No such file or directory

Suggested Fix: apply Patch-ID# 110460-08

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picld will sometimes display errors after power supply hot plug. 
Messages from console output, Bug-ID# 4431165

Mar 28 14:07:46 wgs48-58 picld[70]: Device PS0 removed Mar 28 14:07:51
wgs48-58 
picld[70]: Device PS0 inserted Mar 28 14:07:58 wgs48-58 picld[70]: Device
PS0 
removed Mar 28 14:08:07 wgs48-58 picld[70]: ERROR running 
psvc_ps_device_fail_notifier_policy_0 on PS0 (2361480) Mar 28 14:08:07
wgs48-58 
picld[70]: No such device or address

Suggested Fix: apply Patch-ID# 110849-04

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picld daemon errors in /var/adm/messages with >1GB RAM is installed: 
Bug-ID#s 4432412 and 4451949

Mar 29 15:45:40 option3 picld[88]: [ID 325715 daemon.error] SUNW_picl
memcfg 
physical memory tree failed! Mar 29 15:47:05 option3 pseudo: [ID 129642 
kern.info] pseudo-device: devinfo0 Mar 29 15:47:05 option3 genunix: [ID
936769 
kern.info] devinfo0 is /pseudo/devinfo@0

Suggested Fix: apply Patch-ID# 110460-01

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The following errors are sometimes seen when inserting a power supply:
Bug-ID#s 4413285, 4414411, and 4356073

Feb 7 14:11:02 wgs48-76 picld[77]: Device PS0 removed Feb 7 14:11:12
wgs48-76 
picld[77]: ERROR running psvc_ps_device_fail_notifier_policy_0 on PS0 Feb
7 
14:11:12 wgs48-76 picld[77]: No such device or address Feb 7 14:11:12
wgs48-76 
picld[77]: ERROR running psvc_ps_overcurrent_check_policy_0 on SYSTEM

Suggested Fix: apply Patch-ID# 111792-17

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In addition picld daemon may encounter memory issues:
Bug-ID#s 4431402 and 4417600

Sending lots of SIGHUP signal to picld daemon causes picld to grow over time,
indicating some kind of memory leak.

Suggested Fix: apply Patch-ID# 108528

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Why is picld using 1.3 % of CPU and 57% of memory 
Bug-ID# 4515266

USER PID %CPU %MEM SZ RSS TT S START TIME COMMAND
root 195 1.3 57.2 122832722282528   S Jan 07 2027:11

The first is to restart picld before the leak causes problems on the system
or messages on the console.
If the picld process ended running out of memory every week you could simply
restart picld before that time and you would never see the out of memory
error. To do this you simply run...
#/etc/init.d/picld stop
#/etc/init.d/picld start

Suggested Fix: apply Patch-ID# 110849-09

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picld uses fork() to restart itself, which may cause deadlock on certain
memory corruption errors:
Bug-ID# 4459534

picld restarts itself in subnormal mode when unexpected errors are
encountered 
during its execution. It starts up in degraded mode first, and then in failsafe 
mode, before exiting. The main reason for doing this is to allow critical 
functionality, like environmental monitoring, to continue.

Suggested Fix: apply Patch-ID# 108528

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picld alignment panic occurred during DR test libcfgadm_031_040:
Bug-ID# 4401168
panic[cpu8]/thread=30018e83980: BAD TRAP: type=34 rp=f0472d40 
addr=6969696969696979 mmu_fsr=0 picld: alignment error:
addr=0x6969696969696979 
pid=100070, pc=0xf003efb4, sp=0xf0472601, tstate=0x0, context=0x1801
o0-o7: 
f0801e60, f0826ba0, 0, f0826e60, 300183fa840, 30000102000, f0472601,
f002f620 
g1-g7: 0, 0, 101a3b98, f0801e60, 186a0, 10471778,
104717a200000000f0472a50 
unix:die+b0 (34, f0472d40, 6969696969696979, 0,f0472d40,10432ed0 %l0-3: 
0000042c00001000 00000c6800000e29 0000000000000000
0000000000000001 %l4-7: 
0000000000000000 0000000000000001 0000000000000002
00000000f08067f0 
00000000f0472b30 unix:trap+64c (0, 0, 10000, 0, f0472d40, 0) %l0-3: 
0000000000010200 0000030018c98ac0 0000000000000000 0000000000007fe
%l4-7: 
0080000900000034 0000030018e87530 0000000000800009
00000000104bda70 
00000000f0472c90 unix:user_rtt+32c (2a1006517fc, 9, 0, 2a100651738, a,0)
%l0-3: 
0000000000000006 0000000000001400 0000000080001605
0000000010037040 %l4-7: 
0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000
00000000f0472d40 
00000000f0472de0 f003ef90 (0, 1f, 16, 3c, 0, f08296c0) %l0-3:
0000000000000000 
0000000000000000 0000000000000005 00000000f043922 %l4-7:
0000000000000000 
0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000001 panic: entering
debugger (continue to save dump) Type 'go' to resume debugger entered.

Suggested Fix: apply Patch-ID# 110918-03 or latest KJP 108528-15                                   

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